The Good Life – September-October 2021

catch-of-the-day for the campfire frying pan.
17. Cut off clothing tags. You’re driving to work
and realize you’ve still got one sticking out of your
collar.
18. Sharpen a pencil. For when you want to feel like
a real ar-teest.
19. Cut through zip ties. Which present themselves
in packaging or wrapped around cables.
20. Clean car battery terminals. Remove corrosion
before you jumpstart a battery.
21. Open a letter. It’s rare to get real correspondence
these days, but when you do, you want to avoid
tearing through the envelope’s return address and
contents by slicing it openly neatly.
22. Open a can. When you come upon a cache of
delicious peaches during the apocalypse (à la father
and son in The Road) and don’t have an opener.
23. Cut rope. Rope is handy for a variety of things,
and sometimes you need to trim it down to size.
24. Pry out batteries. When they need replacing
and are stubbornly stuck.
25. Untie a tight knot. Inserting an implement into a
knot can get a tight one undone; a duller tool works
best (you don’t want to cut the rope in the process),
but a knife can get the job done too.
26. Cut loose threads. Those little danglers that
mysteriously emerge from your clothes.
27. Perform an emergency tracheotomy. When
someone’s choking and the Heimlich maneuver fails,
an emergency tracheotomy may be needed, and
doctors have indeed successfully performed them,
using a pocket knife, in places like restaurants and
airplanes (back when carrying a knife on board was
kosher). The whole “being a doctor” part of these
stories is of course an important consideration here.
28. Open a bottle. Use either the spine of the knife’s
blade or the top scale of its handle to pry it up.
29. Cut a new hole in a belt. When you’ve gained (or
lost) some weight.
30. Fend off a wild animal. This dude fended off a
mountain lion attack with his pocketknife; this guy
was able to stop a bear attack using a mere 2-inch
blade.
31. Play mumbley peg. Once a popular pastime
among 19th century schoolboys, Wild West
cowboys, and World War II soldiers; still a viable
outdoors entertainment.
32. Puncture and deflate those plastic packaging
pillows. You know, the big bubble things you get in
all those aforementioned boxes from Amazon.
33. Unscrew small screws. Not the most effective
method, but works in a pinch.
34. Trim your calluses. Peel ‘em like a potato.
35. Open a coconut. There are a variety of ways you
can open a coconut, including using only a small
pocket knife.
36. Defend yourself against an attacker. You don’t
want to bring a knife to a gunfight, especially a
pocketknife, but if it’s all you got, it’s all you got. •
urbantoadmedia.com / THE GOOD LIFE / 29